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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

My son recently visited relatives in Atlanta and was asked to accompany them to a "grand mass" of some 10,000 people who were treated to a fully choreographed religious show complete with electric music and preaching to an orgasmic build to climax and a "blowoff" to a sea of heart-grasping, hand-waving acolytes all with eyes either closed or cast upward or both. While each individual there surely had his own views, it is just as certain that those who chose to go, consider themselves as part of an integrated whole. That is the purpose of dogma - Identity. Anything, just so long as we can count you among Us. Pavlov might be proud.

I have likewise witnessed such "Jesus™ Shows," and the only thing that I can say about them is that they surely have an audience.

Nevertheless –*there will always be an un-countable number of people who "don't attend."

Religion has always been "such a profoundly-powerful influencer of human thought and behavior" that men will never cease to seek to mold it to their own purposes – whatever those purposes might be. The organizers of a 21st Century worship-show, or the political devisings of a canny Roman Emperor. Although I do not wish, by making such an odd comparison, to suggest that I think that the two parties being compared are in any way comparable, I do mean to observe the phenomenal social power of the institution of religion.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs

I have likewise witnessed such "Jesus™ Shows," and the only thing that I can say about them is that they surely have an audience.

Nevertheless –*there will always be an un-countable number of people who "don't attend."
Religion has always been "such a profoundly-powerful influencer of human thought and behavior" that men will never cease to seek to mold it to their own purposes – whatever those purposes might be. The organizers of a 21st Century worship-show, or the political devisings of a canny Roman Emperor. Although I do not wish, by making such an odd comparison, to suggest that I think that the two parties being compared are in any way comparable, I do mean to observe the phenomenal social power of the institution of religion.
We will never change this fundamental dynamic.

Regardless of the "number of people that don't attend", in fact regardless of petty differences (I once heard a lady denigrate a Baptist church because it wasn't truly Southern Baptist) individual Christians still largely do consider all Christians "birds of a feather". I imagine despite the faction differences like Sunni and Shiite most proponents of Islam likely consider all who revere Islam having more in common than not, and so on for others.

I have known a variety of Jewish people and they joke about their differences but think of themselves with mutual identity. I have a few Muslim friends but here in the USA the greatest numbers seem to be Christians so my experience is quite limited outside that so I would like to know if my speculation for those has any merit.

The fact remains that the two largest groups with which I've had contact with individuals of the Faith plus what I read says those two do indeed embrace a similar identity, allowing for minor differences. So the views of the actual people seem to feel some sense of Oneness with the larger whole and this is largely a result of dogma in my experience.

So I still differ with you on that concept, that, as you seemed to state, dogma is at best a subset. It seems to me to be the essential part... the "cake" if you will, and the rest is just a flavor of frosting.

One more thing - it is much easier to get answer to "Does Devil exist?" rather than "Does Creator-Deity(i do not like english word God anymore because if you spell it backwards it say Dog which is insult to higher powers but whatever) exist?" because if you look around our society are adapted for sin-like-behaviour and since Devil's work exist it does not take genious to figure out rest..also watch this video because it is true. It will take some epic event(like another WW) to shake people out of dream-like state of existence.

Sizable numbers in all civilizations have been predicting End-Times (shudder!) periodically since 2800 BC

One thing that has changed though is that a lot of totally irreligious people are now predicting them too. Nowadays you can take your pick of:
1) Catastrophic global warming
2) Peak oil
3) A worldwide epidemic spread by modern travel habits
4) Economic collapse causing social breakdown
5) A breakdown in food production systems caused by pollution.

Nice to know that my generation will probably be safely out of it before most of those things happen. It's the young that I feel sorry for.

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There are always now and have always been quite serious threats to survival. After all being alive implies being able to die so even on an individual level catastrophe is a distinct possibility at any time and that's the point. Catastrophe on any scale is just business as usual so to use that as a reason to gravitate to or reconnect to Faith is a bit silly in my mind. To take that a step further and imagine Biblical End Times is just silly squared and even a bit Schadenfreude for "The Chosen". This is especially so when it fuels a tendency to avoid dealing with survival and focus on Life After Death as if that was a known quantity or even "just in case" as if that would please or fool anyone, let alone a Supreme Being, whatever one imagines that to be.

Not only is it not wise to "cry over spilt milk" it is just as silly to worry needlessly, unproductively over future spilled milk possibilities unless that is motivation to make you insure your tables and countertops are level and pitchers and glasses are stable. I truly don't understand how religious people often accept that they will be judged by a being who created them the way they are for things they are inherently incapable of like knowing the future or knowing there is life after death that includes ones intact personality. That to me would be like being angry and beating your dog because he didn't fly.... but then that illustrates that it is impossible for a human to imagine what it must be like to be able to create a Universe. Personally, I'll deal with that if and when I am ever faced with it/him/her. What more can reasonably be expected?

It will take some epic event (like another WW) to shake people out of dream-like state of existence.

However, please be aware that the mindset that shows through your own post is among the factors that make such "epic events" possible in the first place. Perhaps it would be a good thing to honour our times – the XXI century – by desisting from spreading random, age-old misconceptions and stale superstitions about things like "devils", "higher powers", the alleged implications of spelling deities' names backwards, and beliefs such as the one hidden behind your last sentence: that the mentioned (hoped-for?!) "epic events", allegedly bestowed upon us by some of those "higher powers", would only affect "sinful" people, whereas those having an orthodox or self-authenticated religious faith (what's the difference anyway?) would live happily ever after. Who's the one dreaming here?

"Promises of catastrophe" can be very lucrative. For instance, the talk about a disappearing ozone-layer created a market for "carbon-credit exchanges" ... essentially, a license to pollute.

In Paris, a group of resourceful international politicians created "Climate Accords" which currently extract billions of dollars from the USA (which tends to wind up paying for damn near everything ...) but which are not accountable to them. That sure does pay for a lot of wine, but I daresay it does nothing for the planet.

There is very big business in "selling 'Saving Earth.'" It's big business, as long as everyone on the planet can feel comfy-cozy that they are actually doing something ... even if they're not ... and as long as they buysomething in response to their warm and fuzzy feelings.

"Jesus Shows™" are another example of the same old thing, which is simply: Crowd Psychology.